The liberal centre’s continuing confusion on challenging the BNP

My recent post about the BNP has offended liberals as well as the hard right. Liberal Conspiracy’s Sunny Hundal writes:

‘David is highly confused. This is because he says: “The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking.” Yes, I’ll agree with that. The party’s domestic policies are indeed inspired by a racial supremacist ideology. Which is why people should avoid following those policies right? Except, he does on to say centrist parties “must engage with (and I mean engage with, not shout down)” BNP policies. What a muddle. ‘Engage’ is a mealy-mouthed word that usually means ‘follow’.’

Just to strike a blow for linguistic accuracy, I should point out to Sunny, who is the editor of Liberal Conspiracy no less, that although the word ‘engage’ has many meanings none of them is ‘to follow’.